R42 - BFI: Film Trailers & Film Posters

 Trip to the BFI

On the 5th of February, we had a trip to the BFI where we learnt about film trailers and posters. Although the whole event was aimed at GCE Media students, as A Level students there were parts that we could take that would help us in creating our own trailers and posters. 

On one of the slides, he spoke about mise-en-scene in different posters of the films. On this slide, there was setting, costume, props, lighting, body language, facial expressions etc which audience members had to guess and give their answers via microphone which was handed down by the ushers. Despite this being things we already knew, it was helpful as now it is imprinted on my brain through the repetition. 

He then went on to talking about the technical sides of trailers, and provided the audience with a slide which was also in the handout. This has things like the type of shot, digital technology, editing, sound, camera movement and camera angles. He went through each and how it could be incorporated into trailers. 

Rob then shows us a trailer of Frank (2014) which is an independant film, and how it would appeal to a young audience. He asked as to also take notes on the media conventions used to feedback to him. The shots I managed to pick up on were: close ups, fast paced editing, non diegetic music, and extreme close ups which was what was on the slide he presented soon after. 

He then went onto the importance of trailers for a film, however this would have been particularly useful for our AS exam on films (Les Miserable and Trailers) as we could have spoken about it for a film's marketing campaign. Likewise, he enlisted the conventions of a trailer, highlighting that nearly every trailer starts off with a narrative enigma. This is particularly useful for us now in A2 as we will be creating a trailer and it is important to grasp the audience's attention right from the very start. He also spoke about the textual credits, names of the distributors, key action points that are fast paced towards the end of the trailers, and the length of the trailers.

Between the various different activites, for example, extracting connotations of posters i.e. The Queen (2006) and Submarine (2010), he also showed how you would draw a poster in an exam. This wasn't exactly beneficial for us, but did bring out what audiences would expect to see. He then told us to be imaginative and told everybody in the audience to create their own film poster including the title, tag line etc. Some students took it light heartedly and created films posters of disney characters who had turned evil, with tag lines such as "when the good turn bad" whereas others were very interesting and actually sound appealing. Not everybody turned to the horror genre as most were action and comedy, however as we were doing horror for our genre, we stuck to our film ideas and creating a miniature version of want we want the outcome of our film poster to look like. We also had to identify three ways that our film links to convergent media and why as well as think about 10 ways or poster uses genre marketing. We suppose this is more aimed at the GCSE students, rather than us so we didn't take too much notice to it. 

To end the day, we had a Q&A with Hannah Rothman, who is a business director and creates advertising in London. Examples of her work was presented at the beginning, just before she came up on stage and shows us, the audience, just how many well known projects she has worked on. As an audience, we don't ever tend to think about the people behind the scenes, however this just showed us the importance of people such as Hannah. She said she "extracts bits of clips from here and there to put it into a trailer for clients" (the film companies). Her emphasis on the love she has for her job diminishes the fact that she got the job per chance, however it is evident that she genuinly has a passion for film trailers and posters which is refreshing to see.  

We then had a chance to ask her questions - the first being, where can we find radio trailers to analyse as it is very hard to find, and the second, something along the lines of what tips we can have to create a horror trailer. She talks about the typical convetions of a horror genred film trailer, and then says she prefers it stripped backed, as opposed to fast paced action. She thinks both are effected, but prefers to "mess it about" and to not give people what they expect which is extremely helpful as rhis has given us new ideas as to what we want to include in our horror film trailer. Like others, we were ready to conform to the horror conventions, however now we have different ideas to keep it simple yet effective. 

Overall, the day could've been more beneficial if we were GCE Media students, however we still did find things- or in fact I, did find things that would help me in creating my film poster and trailer.